is a Japanese politician who served as the Minister of the Environment from September 2019 to October 2021. He also serves as a member the Member of the House of Representatives for the Liberal Democratic Party. He is the second son of former Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi and the younger brother of actor Kotaro Koizumi. After graduating from university, Koizumi worked as a researcher at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, and became active politically as Young Leader of the Pacific Forum CSIS. He also spent time working as a political secretary for his father in the final years of his second term as Prime Minister. In the 2009 election, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the seat his father had occupied for more than 35 years. After the election of the Abe Government in 2012, Koizumi was appointed as a Vice-Minister for Reconstruction, focusing on the northeastern region of Japan that was devastated by the March 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster. He publicly opposed his father's calls for Japan to abandon nuclear energy immediately. In 2019, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appointed Koizumi to the Cabinet as Minister of the Environment, a role he retained when Yoshihide Suga succeeded Abe as Prime Minister in September 2020. In January 2020, Koizumi received international news attention when he announced his plans to take two weeks of paternity leave when his first child was born. Early life Koizumi grew up in Yokosuka, his father's home district, attending Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama from elementary school through university with a Bachelor of Economics degree in 2004. When he was a student in junior high and senior high schools, he was engrossed in playing sports, especially baseball. He received his master's degree in political science from Columbia University. He spent one year as a part-time research fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and as Young Leader of the Pacific Forum CSIS before returning to Japan in 2007. After that, he worked as a private secretary of Junichirō, his father. Political career Following his father's announced retirement in 2008, he was elected to his father's former seat representing the Kanagawa 11th district in the August 2009 general election, in which many other LDP seats were lost to the Democratic Party of Japan. He faced criticism for being a hereditary politician. He campaigned in a rented